


Still Dean Winchester.

by gumbelievable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Little Canon Divergent from s11e23, Angel Castiel, But still Beautiful Still Dean Winchester, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Demon Dean, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbelievable/pseuds/gumbelievable
Summary: Destiel Fluff inspired by the Despair script notes "But still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester."The Zeppelin mixtape previously given to Castiel by Dean, brings the two back together post-canon, when a demon stumbles on the cassette tape in a thrift store.Note: contains spoilers up to the series finale 15x20.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	Still Dean Winchester.

Sam Winchester is standing on the balcony over the foyer of the bunker one last time, and he gazes at the place that had been home for his brother and him for eight years. The place had become too depressing to live in any longer. All it contained now were the ghosts of memories in every corner. Sam had made up his mind that it was time to leave the bunker behind and make a fresh start somewhere new, somewhere less painful.

Sam had collected mementos of Castiel and Dean that he would cherish the rest of his life. He also gathered up their old clothes and other items on their desks for donation. Helping people had meant a lot to his brother and his best friend, and he hoped they would be happy to know that they still helped people after they were gone. Sam called to Miracle, and the ex-hunter and his dog left the bunker together for the last time. On the way to his home, Sam stops at a thrift store to drop off his donations. He struggles a bit with one of the bins, and during the struggle a cassette tape he had meant to save slips out of his pocket and into the donation bin.

~~

Not long after that, a demon is rummaging through a bin of some old cassettes, CDs, and records in the thrift store. He is looking for some entertainment that can be purchased with the few dollars found in his meatsuit's wallet. Some handwriting on one of the cassette tapes catches his attention. He pulls it out of the bin and reads the label, "Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx." The demon decides to buy the tape along with a used boom box. After leaving the store, he walks through the parking lot to the beater car that belonged to his meatsuit. He starts the car and thinks he'd like to try some fishing. He parks by the lake, walks to the end of the pier, removes his shoes, and sits on the edge of the pier with his meatsuit's toes skimming the surface of the lake. The demon casts his line out. The he puts the cassette in the boom box and presses play.

While the track _in my time of dying_ plays, he hears a woosh of wings behind him. He turns to see an angel, and the vessel is different but he is sure he recognizes the astral form underneath.

Dean doesn’t have his original body either. After Dean had taken on the soul bomb for defeating Amara a large chunk of his soul was lost when Chuck extracted the bomb. Because Dean went to Hell before, his ripped soul went there too. From then on, the Dean on Earth spiraled downward hitting bottom when he pulled a gun on his brother.

But ripped soul Dean hadn’t been around on Earth at that time. He was getting tortured in Hell until he became a demon. And now for the first time in years he was enjoying the feeling of sunlight on skin. Sure the skin getting sunned belonged to his meatsuit, but he still enjoyed it.

Four months on Earth was the equivalent of forty years in Hell, and after all that time Dean's memories of humanity were nearly forgotten. But after reading the name Dean on the cassette label he was pretty sure his name had once been Dean. And after listening to the traxx he was pretty sure he liked Led Zeppelin.

Dean stared at the angel standing behind him. He was sure this angel had been the one memory he clung to in the pit. He had remembered this angel’s name for so long, but now his mind was failing him.

“Who are you?” Dean asks.

“I’m Castiel,” Castiel responds.

Dean remembers bits and snatches of memories. But they are hazy, and he can’t quite grasp the meaning of them.

“Do you know me?” Dean asks.

“Yes, although I didn’t know part of you had turned into a demon,” Castiel admits.

“Part of me? Is the rest of me an angel?” Dean is feeling hopeful that at least part of him gets to be righteous.

“Sorry, no. The rest of you died from a random vampire jabbing you with rusty rebar,” Castiel states frankly.

The demon breaks into a fit of laughter, and when he looks up he sees Castiel is smiling at him. That tugs at something in his meatsuit’s chest.

“Did you love me?” Dean surprises himself by saying aloud the question quaking through his blackened demon soul.

“More than anything else,” Castiel replies. “I love you now more than anything else too.”

This is Cas. Dean’s mind is reeling as it pulls things through the haze. Dean stares steadily into Castiel’s eyes. He finds strength there to say the words that are screaming in his meatsuit’s skull.

“And I you, Cas.” Dean closes the distance between himself and his angel, and Cas folds Dean into his arms.

Dean’s eyes flash black and Cas’s flash blue while they hold each other close enough for the breath of their meatsuit and vessel to mingle. Then Dean has his hands along Cas’s neck and his fingers card through the back of Cas’s hair. Cas has his arms around Dean’s waist pulling him in tighter.

“Was I a good kisser?” Dean asks flirtatiously.

“We never kissed, Dean,” Castiel’s deep voice quietly whispers.

Hearing his name spoken after centuries in the pit feels like coming home to Dean. He can’t resist smiling broadly. It’d been so long since Dean had been happy. He can’t even remember if he’d been this happy when he was human.

The opening bars of _the rain song_ have begun playing on the boombox. “Can we kiss now?” Dean asks and in his mind he thinks and “for forever too,” but he’s not ready to scare off this angel that means so much to him. The angel's vessel may be different from the one in his memories, but that didn't matter to Dean. He was still beautiful. He was still Castiel.

“I’d like that. I’d like to kiss you forever,” Castiel smiles.

And they do.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted Dean to find the tape, but I've never seen cassette tapes sold in thrift stores. I feel like those would probably just be trashed if found in a donation pile, so I hope you didn't mind having some suspension of disbelief there.
> 
> After the script leaked with 15x18 saying "But still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester." I thought about how a post canon fic with Destiel might unfold. Castiel would always find Dean beautiful no matter what form he took, because he was always Dean Winchester. And I think Dean would feel the same.


End file.
